June 15, 2005

Ion Pumping Cords

For those of you familiar with Japanese styles of Acupuncture, the Ion Pumping Cord is one of your best friends. What if someone told you that Ions can't travel through wires, only electrons can? What if someone said that the diode within the two cords you generally use may have completely different level of resistance or may simply not work at all?

Well that's what Craig Houchen's website is saying. This site looks old, but the info is interesting nonetheless. Craig lays out some schematics on how a diode is supposed to work, and how it might on the body. He gives some good basic electronics lectures to prove his point.

Being someone who knows dangerously little about the topic, I can't verify or refute his findings: Link

This is very reminiscent of the recent study finding most electro-acupuncture machines produce completely different stimulation levels.

Posted by Admin at June 15, 2005 10:42 AM

Comments

Having practiced energetic medicine for over 30 years, both manually and with needles, magnets, moxa, threading, cupping, with ion cords, without ion cords, let me make one observation:
Intention is the mechanism that makes our art successful, not the science, not the recipe, not the 4 or 5 years of schools. The acupuncture organizations are missing the boat. Instead of wasting the practitioners time in school the practitioner should be practicing, that is how they learn. The organizations should be spending their money on media advertising to the public. Our field will always be at the mercy of the medical community and their alleged research, why fight that dynamic. Forget trying to convince medical people that what we do is real and just make it popular. Produce an acupuncture Dr. Kildare show and see how our popularity increases. That's how the medical people did it. We should take a lesson from the dominant species.

I have to respectfully disagree with Dr. LaCarruba's comments. While I am very aware that medicine of all types are an art, the science behind our craft is the key to its future. None of us practicing need anything proven to us, nor do our patients. The medical community as a whole however, needs more education and they need it in terms they can understand. As technology improves and more research is done, what we all know to be true will be revieled. Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine do work. Once this becomes common accepted knowledge we will truly be operating in an integrated medical model. In this age of information it is no longer good enough just to say "trust me, it works".

I tend to agree with Mark on this. Nicholas does have one point: increasing popularity with mainstream news media will most certainly help. If anything it will get us into the spotlight and possibly allow us to get more funding for furthering our study.

I am all for intention. Try as you may, there are still lots of things that just won't get fixed with intentions and needles. We need to know what we can fix, what we can't, and the point I think most people miss is how BEST to apply what we know.

For example, an old study in the Shangahi TCM Journal shows that rats with hypertension responded great to Acupuncture and great to Chinese Herbs, but when given together, it's like the positive effects are cancelled out and nothing happens. Who would have ever this was even a possible outcome without a study?